Let Your Dessert Table Bloom

Cupcakes make a great and easy foundation for trying new things. With a small surface to work with, you can top your treat with one fabulous larger-scale flower or multiple smaller-scale flowers to showcase your skills, practice decorating techniques or even experiment with color and arrangement.

“Spring celebrations provide a great opportunity to try a new decorating technique,” says Nancy Siler, vice president of consumer affairs at Wilton.

“Decorated cupcakes and other mini treats let you experiment with multiple new ideas while having fun in the kitchen. Plus, who can resist the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ that your beautiful floral cupcakes will certainly elicit?”

Try these tips from Wilton to create your own bouquet of sweet treats:

Botanical Beauties: Planning a bridal shower or other special occasion? Make cupcakes that mimic the flowers used for the event or those planned for the bride’s bouquet.

Fun with Flowers: Pick up fresh decorating inspiration in books available at your local craft store. You’ll learn the techniques and discover the tools that make it easy to create extraordinary decorating projects, including beautiful flowers, for cupcakes, sweet treats or a layered cake.

Floral Fantasy: Adapt techniques to suit your floral style. Sometimes, just changing the size of the decorating tip changes the look of a flower dramatically. Experiment with tip size, color and design to create a garden full of icing flowers. After all, who says you can’t create the flowers you see in your dreams?

Bloom Where You’re Planted: Carry the floral theme from the bottom of your treats to the top. Highlight your gorgeous icing flowers by using baking cups that look like flowers for your cupcakes rather than traditional baking cups. The petal-shaped top edge will beautifully accent your cupcake blooms.

For more spring flower ideas, baking tips, inspiration and where to take a class, visit www.wilton.com.

Star Drop Flowers

Drop flowers are a great way to make flowers quickly. The star drop flower is the easiest to make because the tip does all the work for you.

Use it to fill in bouquets or borders, or to top individual sweet treats, like cupcakes, brownies and cookies.